ERSE releases 2024 Electricity Self-Consumption Report
10/09/2025
The 2024 Electricity Self-Consumption Report, prepared by ERSE – the Energy Services Regulatory Authority, reveals that the growth trend in self-consumption in mainland Portugal has accelerated significantly in recent years.
This document, which analyses some of the impacts of self-consumption on the electricity system, indicates that the number of self-consumption generation units (UPAC) increased by around 44% per year between 2021 and 2024, with installed self-consumption capacity growing by an average of 57% per year.
At the end of 2024, the number of electricity self-consumers in mainland Portugal totalled around 237,000, with an installed capacity of 1.8 GW of UPAC, mainly using photovoltaic technology. These numbers compare with the PNEC 2030 target set at almost 6 GW.
The report, which is based on information reported by network operators and published by the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology, also states that self-consumed energy accounted for almost 3% of final electricity consumption in 2024.
In turn, around 27% of the energy produced for self-consumption was injected into the public electricity grid (536 GWh) as surplus, of which 43% was sold on the market. This is a reality that occurs when domestic consumption does not fully absorb UPAC production, thus resulting in energy being injected into the grid.
The sharing of energy generated for collective self-consumption by several consumption facilities geographically close to UPACs has also evolved. However, the first cases of collective self-consumption were only recorded in 2023.
In the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira, self-consumption schemes very similar to those on the mainland are in place. The growth of self-consumption in these regions is also very significant.
Regarding the economic benefit for the self-consumer this will depend on several specific factors, including their ability to shift consumption to hours when generation is available, avoiding consumption from the grid and the associated costs of access to the grids.
